"Good morning, Roy. Is Gavin around?"
"The Sheriff and Deputy Fernandez are out on a call, ma'am. Left me in charge. Seems there's been some trouble down at the old Whitaker cabin."
"Will you cut out the ma'am stuff, Roy? You make me feel like Dale Evans."
The deputy grinned a little sheepishly. "I just thought we ought to be a little more businesslike around here, what with all the reporters and television people and whatnot."
"Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. How soon do you expect Gavin back?"
"That's hard to say. Seems whoever it was made the phone call wasn't bein" very clear about what the trouble was at the cabin."
Holly chewed at her lower lip. Why was there never a cop around when you needed one?
"Anything I can help you with?"
"It was just a message I wanted to give the Sheriff."
"You're welcome to sit yourself down and wait for him." Roy wheeled one of the unused swivel chairs over for her.
"No thanks, Roy, I'm in kind of a hurry. I'll leave him a note."
She tore a page from Ramsay's calendar pad and wrote:
Gavin
I managed to find out where Dr Pastory's clinic is without getting in the way of any of your "duly authorized police officers'.
I'll let you know when I've found Malcolm.
Good luck with your big murder investigation.
She read it over, then crumpled the page and threw it into the waste basket. Cheap sarcasm was not her style. On another calendar sheet she wrote:
Gavin
Dr Pastory's clinic is located in Bear Paw. I'm on my way up
there. I'll check with you as soon as I find anything.
Take care, Holly
She placed the note in the centre of his desk blotter, anchoring it with a stapler.
"Thanks, Roy," she said. "I'll see you."
"Any time, ma'am," he said, reaching for the brim of the hat he was not wearing. Then, grinning, "Oops. I'm kinda getting into the habit, I guess."
Before leaving the office Holly checked the big map tacked to one wall. It covered all of La Reina County and included parts of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Kern Counties as well. She located the tiny community of Bear Paw just on the other side of the Tehachapi Pass, beyond Clarion. She figured it as a two- to three-hour drive, depending on road conditions. There certainly wouldn't be much traffic between here and there.
She filled the tank of her little Rabbit across the road at Art Moore's station, then headed north. Holly's mind was filled with thoughts of what she was going to say to Wayne Pastory when she found him, and she did not pay any attention to the little orange car that pulled on to the road behind her and followed her out of town.
The roads were good all the way, although narrowing to a cramped two lanes as she left the state highway. It took her slightly less that two hours to reach the community of Bear Paw. Had she not been actively looking for it, the entire town would have been easy to miss.
There was the Bear Paw Ski Lodge, a faintly alpine A-frame building with the windows shuttered and a chain across the driveway leading to the entrance. A hand-lettered sign hanging from the chain read: CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.
That was it, except for a paint-peeling frame building that was combination post office/grocery store/gas station /tavern. Out in front were parked a grimy Ford pick-up and an equally grimy Plymouth some twenty years old.
Holly pulled to a stop at the old-fashioned gas pumps. When no one appeared after a minute, she got out and went into the building. Three men, none of them younger that seventy, sat around — not a pot-bellied stove — but an electric heater. The temperature inside was a stifling 80. Behind a scarred wooden counter a grossly overweight woman with a moustache sat on a stool reading a paperback novel called Love's Raging Heart.
The three men looked up when Holly entered. The woman continued to read. No one spoke.
"Hi," Holly said finally. "This is Bear Paw, I hope?"
"Sure is, honey," said the woman. She marked her spot in the book with a forefinger and looked up. "What can we do you for?"
"I was wondering if you knew of a clinic around here. Owned by Dr Wayne Pastory."
One of the men around the heater worked his lips noisily over toothless gums. "You a friend of his?"
"Not exactly. We sometimes work together. The clinic is around here somewhere?"
Another of the men spoke up. His hands were gnarled and knobbed with arthritis. He kept them lying awkwardly in his lap as though they did not really belong to him. "What you want to go up there for, anyhow?"
Holly was about to tell the man it was none of his damn business, but brought herself under control. "I have to see Dr Pastory about something," she said, as courteously as she could manage.
"You sick?" said the woman.
"I'm a doctor."
"You don't look like a doctor," said the third man. He had one eye that appeared to be glass. Cheap glass.
"Well, I am." Holly began to feel more than a little irritated with these unpleasant rustics.
"If you're sick, you'd do a lot better to go to Doc Simms down in Clarion," said the man with arthritis. "Good man, Doc Simms. Been around long enough to know what he's doing. Your Doc, what's his name, Pastorini… "
"Pastory."
"Whatever. He don't look like he's dry behind the ears yet. Name sounds like a foreigner, besides."
"Look," Holly said, putting some authority into her voice, "I'm in something of a hurry. Could you please tell me where the clinic is?"
"No need to get snippy about it," said the toothless man. "You want to go to the doggone clinic, that's your business. We sure ain't stoppin" you."
"Where is it?" Holly was surprised at the whip-crack in her own voice. The four people stared as though really seeing her for the first time.
The woman finally spoke. "Go on up the way you're headed about a mile and a half. There's a logging trail turns off to your right. It ain't easy to see if you're not watchin'. Drive up that two, maybe three miles. And there you are."
They stared at her for another long moment, but no one spoke again.
"Thank you very much," Holly said. She hurried out of the store, into the car, and headed up the road.
At approximately the time Holly was pulling out of Pinyon on her way to find his clinic, Dr Wayne Pastory was leading Malcolm from his room to a part of the clinic where he had not been before. It was a high-ceilinged room that was bare of decoration. The furniture consisted of two plain wooden chairs. There was one door, and a high-up window that showed nothing but the dark trees outside.
Inside the room was a cage of heavy-gauge steel wire mesh that was backed against one wall. The cage measured about seven feet square, and contained a stretched-canvas cot and a bucket for waste.
Pastory unlocked the door to the cage and guided Malcolm inside. "I'm sorry to have to lock you up like this, Malcolm, but I have to drive into Clarion for supplies. I shouldn't be gone more than three hours, and I trust you won't be too uncomfortable in that time."
"Why do I have to be locked in here?" Malcolm said. His mind was still fuzzy from the sleeping drug he'd been given the night before.
"Security, my boy, security," said Pastory, giving him a little pat on the shoulder. "It's as much for your own safety as anything else."
The doctor backed out of the cage, closed the steel-framed door, and snapped a heavy padlock through the hasp. "If there is anything you absolutely need before I get back, Kruger will be here." He turned and called toward the open door of the room. "Kruger!"
The big man entered so quickly that he must have been standing outside listening.
"I want you to stay here with our young friend," Pastory told him. "Get him anything he wants within reason. That is, anything that will fit through the mesh. I do not want you to unlock the door except in the gravest emergency. Is that understood?"